Googling around, I cannot find any guides for rebuilding any 105 shifters. So I thought I may as well make a guide when I took mine apart.

Got these 105(5500) shifters off eBay, and they were dirty as! The levers were scratched up and ugly, and the shifting was fine, but it didnt feel smooth.

Onto dismantling. Once the hoods are removed, you are faced with this panel which is on the inside part of the shifter(where your thumbs go). Just unscrew with a Phillips screwdriver. Inside is just the Flightdeck computer cable.

Use a 2mm allen key to remove the grub screw which holds the pivot on.

Use a small enought screw driver to push out the pivot. Now you can remove the lever from the body. Take care when removing the Flightdeck cable.

Get a flat head screwdriver or something of the sort to pry off the name plate.

Underneath this name plate is another screw. Remove with a Phillips, and then you can pull off that black part.

Next is a 8mm nut. Use an adjustable wrench, a 8mm wrench or a 8mm socket to remove. Theres dirt build up already, and I havent even reached the inside yet.

Flip the lever to the backside to locate a Phillips screw. Remove this screw. Watch out for the washer underneath. More dirt and grease build up. You now can pull off the lever. There is a round spring behind, and make sure this doesnt fly off somewhere(very low chance though).

A 9mm nut is next. Use an adjustable wrench, a 9mm wrench or a 9mm socket to remove. Its surpsing that theres all this grease and dirt out here. The internal gears are the parts that need to be greased, not the outside parts. Note that the round spring will be reattached to the small slit at 7 oclock in the pic.

You can remove the black plate, the silver plastic body part(cable guide) underneath, and a grey ring which connects to the Flightdeck cable.

Now you have two choices, continue dismantling or you can dip it into some sort of degreaser. I chose to no go any further, as everything can be accessed at this point. I chucked it into petrol, and let it soak for a few mins. You can use a toothbrush or something similar to brush away the grease and dirt.

Now once the parts are clean, you can begin to grease the parts. There are only two areas which would need grease.The bottom side of the shifter.

Hard to see, but its the top side. Lift up the pawl, and grease underneath.

Thats it! Now to rebuild do these steps backwards. Repeat for the other shifter if need be(right hand is slightly different, but it is mostly the same).

The end result after sanding and polishing.

And as an aside, heres a couple finished products of the Soras(3300) which were rebuilt and polished. Hoods were repaired with silicone as well. I cut the right hood all the way down the outer side as it was already half ripped, then taped the innerside and silicone patched it up. Works well so far. Link below was what I read up on:https://sites.google.com/site/reukpower ... ra-sti-fix

Oh, and I will offer a service to rebuild STI levers. So far I have done the Sora and the 105 as above, but I am sure that I can get around to doing the others without too many problems. I will also gladly take in any broken shifters, or ones that do not work anymore. Please PM me if youre interested!

And I would be able to do a more indepth one for the next shifters(most likely if someone needs a repair). This time around it was quite explorative and ai didn't really take pics of every single step.

Hmm, thats quite the thorough pic guide. Surprised he says taking it from the back is easier than the front. However, those spring mechanisms look hard the first time you see them. After building a pair, it gets so much easier.

I bought myself a pair of RX100 intergrated shifters, so those are up next. Also got the RSX ones to do as well soon. Possibly getting down a 105 (5600) to repair.

I've got 105's here that are about 1995-1996 era I recon, eight speed. they're on my mates bike that he bought new and stored. I took it to do it up so he could ride it and all I had to do was replace rim tape, tubes, tyres, brake pads, bar tape and a few other obsolete items. The bike is like new, even the rims have no pad wear, no chain wear nothing. the cables are cool, the selectors are fine but the shifters are causing me grief. I sprayed wd40 in them origionaly and got them selecting ok and I thought done because they arn't dirty but my mate doesn't ride the bike for months and when he gets back on it the shifters are dead again. I don't really want to pull them apart and am thinking that the issue is probably that the original grease has polimarised? I'm toying with submerging them in thiners for a while and letting the grease work out of them and then putting a small amount of oil in them. My mates probably going to ride the bike twice a year for like 40km so I'm looking for the easiest solution. Does anyone hate my idea? Get in line please

I have serviced a pair of 6500 shifters (9-speed Ultegra) and they look very similar internally.

I pulled them down and removed each of the individual paws and greased everything as it went back together with teflon grease (so hope the grease won't harden over time). Cleaned all of the parts in my parts cleaner with diesel, a rag and degreaser and water for the plastic parts.

It is a fiddly job and some of the springs are a bugger to get back on (especially pre-loading the cable barrels), but if you have a vice to hold the shifter pin body in, the job will be much easier for you.

I'm suspecting they are 100% the same internally and externally. Really the differences are the silver plastic lever body and small shifter and the Ultegra nameplate. Any good to hear you got them working. Putting the outermost spring back on would be the one which took me the most time to do. I used a small hobby knife to pull the spring over to where te supposed to be held.

When I put them back together I used teflon grease to make sure that it didn't harden over time. However because these shifters are very tired which is mainly noticeable in that the springs in them don't have the kick they use to, they have a little trouble fighting the resistance of the grease which is causing shifting issues.

With use they are freeing up a little and I will give them a couple of weeks before I try to resolve this issue in the hope they free up and are fine. However, if I was doing this again I would probably be using some teflon chain lube on them rather than grease. This wouldn't be an issue if they where new springs (but then why would you be rebuilding them) I would expect.